Colder weather on the way

After a record-setting warm January, it looks like a return to winter reality could be ahead. Charlie Notis is a commercial weather consultant with Freese-Notis Weather Service in Des Moines. He expects a sharp change in the middle of this month. He thinks major changes will happen in the upper atmosphere including a ridge of high pressure “sharpening up” in the west coast that’ll make the flow come down from Canada’s Northwest Territories and making it colder, at least for a week or two. There’s a lot of discussion in weather circles of a La Nina forming in the Pacific Ocean.

Notis says they aren’t getting too excited about that right now. He says almost always when a winter brings us record warmth, in the top ten in weather records, he says the following summer’s likely to bring record warm temps. Notis says they will have their spring outlook ready by March first.